Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) yesterday urged the legislature to pass amendments that would pave the way for the integration and upgrading of the administrative status of Taichung County and Taichung City.
With the legislature set to go into recess tomorrow, Chang encouraged lawmakers to enact the administrative zoning law (行政區劃法) and approve amendments to the Law Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) and Local Government Act (地方制度法) before their session ends.
Part of President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) election platform was to introduce a third international airport, a third science park and a third special municipality.
The Executive Yuan would like to see Taichung City and Taichung County integrated and the combined administrative entity upgraded to a special municipality.
Cabinet Spokesman Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) denied that the government's policy had anything to do with Chen. He said the Cabinet backs any policy that is conducive to regional development.
It was not in the government's power to determine if the policy will be implemented, he said, but it would do its best to make it happen.
Chang said the Executive Yuan would form a cross-ministerial taskforce to help formulate supplementary measures and prepare for the upgrade in administrative status.
Meanwhile, the Executive Yuan is seeking to boost the tourism industry by injecting NT$1 billion (US$30.76 million) over the next two years to take advantage of the Olympic Games in Beijing next August, and the World Games in Kaohsiung and the Deaflympic Games in Taipei in 2009.
With the injection of funds, Chang said the government hopes to see the number of tourists visiting Taiwan reach 4.25 million by 2009 and tourism-related industries achieve NT$192.1 billion in revenues.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching